The Chicago Bulls have made it known they don’t plan to put point guard Derrick Rose back on the court until he is fully healthy.

Bulls chairman Jerry Reinsdorf, speaking with ESPN 1000's "Talking Baseball" on Saturday, pledged not to return the franchise’s cornerstone player until he has healed from a torn left ACL injury suffered in Game 1 of last season’s first-round playoff series against the Philadelphia 76ers. Rose had surgery to remedy the injury on May 12, and is expected to require eight to 12 months before he can make a comeback.

"I'm not going to let him back until the doctors tell me that it's absolutely safe for him to come back," Reinsdorf told ESPN 1000's "Talking Baseball." "I made that mistake with Michael Jordan years ago where I think we let him come back too soon. It worked out OK, but it might not have. This time I'm not going to make that mistake. Until the doctors say he's 100 percent and they put their reputations on the line, he's not coming back."

Jordan broke a bone in his left foot and sat out 64 games of the 1985-86 season, and was allowed to return for the team’s final 15 games, as noted by ESPN.com. Jordan did not re-injure himself, and he led the team in scoring its final eight games and led Chicago to the playoffs.

As pointed out by ESPN.com, Rose's brother and manager, Reggie Rose, recently told ESPNChicago.com Rose is ahead of schedule and walking without a brace. Reinsdorf also has a positive outlook on the news he has heard regarding Rose's rehab.

"The doctors told us that it would be eight to 12 months from the time of the surgery," Reinsdorf said. "Surgery was the middle of May. That means the earliest possible time he'll be back would be the middle of January. If it's 12 months, then he'll miss the whole season. We just don't know. The reports are very good. They say he's ahead of schedule. He's doing all the rehabbing he's got to do. We'll see. In the meantime, I think we're going to have a pretty decent club."

The Bulls still figure to make the playoffs, though near the bottom of the Eastern Conference, not near the top of the league as they did the past two seasons.

Chicago has All-Star forward Luol Deng, Carlos Boozer and Joakim Noah in the fold, but lost C.J. Watson, Amir Asik, Kyle Korver and Ronnie Brewer in free agency. The replacements—Nazr Mohammad, Kirk Hinrich, Marco Belinelli and Vladimir Radmanovic—are expected to pick up where a productive group left off.